The transmission of information from one point to another is usually performed at an expense related to the volume of information being transported, as well as to the distance over which the information must be carried. With pages of information that are formed of mixed text and images, the images can often contain one to two orders of magnitude more data than the text, and thus can significantly influence the creation of substantial bottlenecks in transmission.
With an ever increasing bandwidth in file transfers, whether it be in relation to the Internet, other computer connections such as wireless and local transfer or even within a computer, the bottleneck referred to above is often reduced. However, one problem that seems to pervade the developing computer industry in that increases in bandwidth are often quickly matched by increases in file size, thereby never effectively addressing the problem identified above.
Improving image compression schemes have assisted in reducing the size of images being transferred. However, the decrease in file size is typically minimal. For example, a JPEG 2000 image is at most 30% smaller than a traditional JPEG image, the latter representing fifteen years older technology.